


nothing matters when we're dancing

by Ibbyliv



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, Dogs, Kissing, M/M, New Year's Eve, Nostalgia, Relationship Problems, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:58:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3072305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibbyliv/pseuds/Ibbyliv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s twenty three minutes to midnight, Grantaire is sober, and there’s only two things he can see. One, Enjolras is art. This is nothing new, Enjolras has always been art. The thing is, today Enjolras is conceptual art of the 70s, his nails painted with glitter and shaking, he’s sober too, always has been and his fingers are shaking as he turns pages of black and white newspapers that lay around him on the carpet.</p><p>Two, they have swapped positions, and it makes Grantaire want to throw up. Enjolras makes an effort, always has, he’s never given up except from now, a tiny existential crisis in the middle of New Year’s Eve, and Grantaire wants to be sick all over the place, because all he’s ever believed in is Enjolras, and now Enjolras doesn’t believe in himself.</p><p>
  <em>It’s almost midnight and it’s Enjolras who’s getting worse.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing matters when we're dancing

**Author's Note:**

> Last year I wrote Worth Melting For. Consider this as a darker sequel, no way as satisfactory as the last fic was. I'm going through a horrible writer's block and I really am not enjoying what I write right now. Other than that, the New Year is making me fricking nostalgic, and my friends are going through stuff and I'm going through stuff and we won't be together today but hey, at least I'll have the person who matters the most to me so I'm thankful. This fic is ridiculous and melodramatic and so so self imposed so I'm sorry if it sucks, I needed to write it to get my thoughts in order.  
> So yeah, the songs I cruelly mistreated this time is: Magnetic Fields - Nothing matters when we're dancing and Magnetic Fields - Asleep and Dreaming, and the poem is Richard Siken's snow and dirty rain.  
> Thank you for being with me this year, thank you for giving me all that you have given. This fandom is like a second family to me. I wish you all the best you can have for this year, and I will wish you more when I'm in the mood to be eloquent. Lots and lots of love <3  
> Opinions and constructive criticism are always more than welcome!

It’s twenty three minutes to midnight, Grantaire is sober, and there’s only two things he can see.

One, Enjolras is art. This is nothing new, Enjolras has always been art. Everything about him, his hair, his lips, the way he embellished words and sewed them together and breathed them out of his porcelain chest, the tips of his fingers, slender and elegant, then clenching into a fist and piercing the skies and falling back in exhaustion, Enjolras has always been art. The thing is, today Enjolras is conceptual art of the 70s.

He’s sat in the middle of the living room, music and tinsel and dancing and friends and a cheerful dog, everyone around him yet he’s distanced from them. He’s actually made an effort this year, trying to make them feel it’s okay, trying to make them feel they’re not pressuring him. His nails are painted with glitter and right now they’re shaking, he’s sober too, always has been and his fingers are shaking as he turns pages of black and white newspapers that lay around him on the carpet. The expression on his face could be a poem, Jehan could write about it, the pain that is palpable in everyone’s throat yet everyone tries to make him have fun, everything is conceptual art and could be part of a museum of an artist that’d want to show how shitty the world we live in has been this year. Grantaire as an artist, complete with a _Not Paint Water_ mug gifted from Feuilly for Christmas, couldn’t have done it better.

Two, they have swapped positions, and it makes Grantaire want to throw up. Enjolras makes an effort, always has, he’s never given up except from now, a tiny existential crisis in the middle of New Year’s Eve, and Grantaire wants to be sick all over the place, because all he’s ever believed in is Enjolras, and now Enjolras doesn’t believe in himself.

It’s eighteen minutes to midnight and their friends are dancing and kissing and laughing, dragging them to stand up and join them, and he partly does, but Enjolras doesn’t. Instead he sits, a miserable slumped figure in the corner of the couch, cracking a small smile as he plays with Theroigne, his dog. _Enjolras,_ the grumpiest cynophobic of all times, now only brightening up when the excited furry ball with the hanging tongue bounces on his lap and bites his favorite red coat.

And then it’s twelve minutes to midnight and Grantaire’s heart sinks lower and lower, because Courfeyrac wants to slow dance so the lights go down and it’s dark, and he once had one sun and nothing else. A sun that’s now forgotten to shine down on him, and it’s night and it’s snowing almost cruelly, and he can’t see the stars anymore because they’re not glowing in Enjolras’ eyes. Combeferre offers Enjolras to dance and the latter politely declines, and Combeferre sighs because astronomy will have to be revised, and Jehan turns around to hide a couple of tears because the moon at whom he crooned, has given up and died.

It’s ten minutes to midnight and Grantaire is still sober.

It’s nine minutes to midnight and Grantaire is still getting better.

It’s eight minutes to midnight and each and every one of them feels like a pang in Enjolras’ chest.

_It’s almost midnight and it’s Enjolras who’s getting worse._

He stares from the corner of his eye, it’s not like his position gives him the right or the _moyens_ to interfere in any way. Grantaire dies a little on the inside, because he know the look on Enjolras’ face, he’s been there before, he’s drowned there before, he knows what it is like to be surrounded by the people you love the most and still feeling alone.

_It’s just that he’d never thought it would happen where there was always light._

New Year creeps around mediocrely, like a bad, forced orgasm. They count but he’s away, they shout but his throat is blocked, they kiss but their lips don’t touch and dull and distorted, the colors are mingling together and the fireworks are muted.  The dog is sleeping on Enjolras’ lap, he’s smiling between Combeferre and Courfeyrac, he’s unbelievably calm, even affectionate when his parents call, and they all shout something about character development but Grantaire knows it’s not. He can taste the disappointment biling in others’ mouths even when he doesn’t touch their lips, he can lie on their emptiness and make it his own, and sleep into oblivion without even drinking.

The snow falls heavy and they all decide to stay there for the night. There should be excitement, they’re still young, it’s still time for drinking games and orgies in the bathtub, but for some reason he’s not in the mood. Their friends are dancing and drinking when he feels tired. Enjolras and Grantaire fall asleep in separate couches, Grantaire’s legs around the cushions, Enjolras’ arms around Theroigne.

*

He wakes up in the middle of the night with a horrid aftertaste in his mouth, one he can only curse away.

He stretches his legs over the couch, feeling sluggish and dopey. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, not with Theroigne waking up and stretching her paws, then giving a jump on the cushions and settling on his knees. He laughs sleepily as she licks his face, and scratches behind her massive ears. Grantaire is in love with that dog the same way he’s in love with her owner. The difference is that, aside from her stinky breath, the dog will never try to hurt him.

He blinks several times in order to get used to the dimness of the fairy lights Jehan has hung all over the place. It’s quite dreamy in that hour of the night, actually, with the colorful wooden piano in the corner of the room, sleeping peacefully covered in tinsel, as well as several of their friends. In the darkness he can make out Bahorel’s giant figure slumped around Eponine and Musichetta, Joly and Bossuet snoring tangled at their feet. He tiptoes his way to the kitchen with the dog following at his heel, stumbling over the coffee table and causing whom sounds like Courfeyrac to growl and throw a pillow on his head.

He rests against the kitchen counter, sipping cranberry juice greedily straight from the carton, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He peels a tangerine and savours it slowly as if it’s the best fucking treat he could find. There’s something tranquil and domestic about being alone in a sleazy kitchen long after midnight, a feeling he hadn’t embraced before in his loud, obnoxious life. Theroigne sits on her back legs and tilts her head on the side, staring at her with Pontmercy eyes. He can’t do this without his heart breaking in a thousand pieces, so he finds some honey and gives her his finger to lick it. He knows how much she likes it, and the intense wagging of her tail pays him back for his deed.

When he returns in the living room, Enjolras’ couch is empty and his boots have gone amiss. His chest clenches tightly. He puts Theroigne to sleep on Combeferre’s lap and peers out in Courfeyrac’s giant balcony after wrapping his parka tightly around his body. He shuts the frigid cold outside the apartment and steps carefully into the thick layer of snow.

Enjolras is standing on the edge of the balcony, resting there and looking at the rooftops as they lay beneath them. Something jolts inside Grantaire. There is a cigarette between Enjolras’ silk, cherry lips. His fingers are gloveless, shaking as they tangle around it. All of him is shaking, and it isn’t just the cold. The silver smoke is swirling amidst the snowflakes, melting and dying and Enjolras brings his trembling finger to light it all over again, and Grantaire just watches from a distance, like he always has.

He curses loudly, his voice but a hoarse shudder. Grantaire is quick enough to stride by his side, grabbing his wrist to steady him. They’re almost knees-deep in the snow and Enjolras’ boots are thankfully thigh-highs because underneath he’s wearing nothing but his starry pyjama pants.

He steadily feels his muscles relax in his grip. He exhales smoke and they stand there, gazing at the sleeping city lights below their feet.

 _I’ve seen you laugh at nothing at all,_ the lyrics come creeping through his head in the peaceful silence of the night. _I’ve seen you sadly weeping…_

_The sweetest thing I ever saw, was you asleep and dreaming._

“I didn’t know you smoked,” he mutters, following with his eyes the ash as it twirls in the air and burns the snow.

“I didn’t either,” Enjolras croaks, his head turned away, his golden locks flowing in the wind. Grantaire shudders in horror. There’s something extremely protective inside him for Enjolras, something that will never leave. Thankfully he’s wearing Combeferre’s scarf, but Grantaire takes off his parka nevertheless and wraps it around the boy’s slender shoulders.

“You’re gonna freeze,” Enjolras huffs.

“My sweater’s thick enough, don’t worry…”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Because you aren’t.”

“Why does that keep you from it?”

“Your dreams are interlocked with mine,” Grantaire hums softly, his fingers reaching for a damp strand of Enjolras’ hair. “Your rebellion interrupts my drooling peace.”

Enjolras finally turns to face him. “What can I do for you?” he asks with little patience in his voice, though lacking any harshness.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Grantaire says airily. “Like, stop trying to suddenly be me!”

“What?” Enjolras asks absurdly, forgetting his recent malaise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Grantaire sighs, leaning over the balcony, with his wool-cladded arms singing into the soft snow, “that you’ve suddenly become all pissy and melodramatic in my place. And I can’t tolerate my world to turn upside down, not when I’ve come this far.” The festive lights Jehan and Courfeyrac have wrapped around the balcony are glowing like fireflies through the fabrics of their clothes. “Apollo,” he adds with a smirk that reminds him of what they’d exchanged in the past.

“How can you not be?” Enjolras’ voice comes out strangled. “We’ve spent the evening celebrating, while…” he takes a deep breath, his old rhetoric ability returning through the wind. “While genocides are taking place all around. You know how I feel about this holiday…”

“The capitalist machine that shoves family and tradition down our throats in the middle of religious oppressive imperialism and privilege they try to normalize with emetic messages about love and spirit,” Grantaire chants rhythmically. “Yes, I know. I also know, however, that you spend these days helping in shelters and defending people who have nothing to lose, without you having anything to earn. You _believe_ in this, you’ve always tried to change things, hell, you’ve _changed_ things!” His hands finds Enjolras’ frozen one. He feels it numb beneath his touch, struck with electricity as he starts to rub his knuckles almost violently to restart circulation. “Don’t you _dare_ give up now.”

“What have I _actually_ changed?” Enjolras almost growls.

“Me.”

Enjolras looks struck. His lips are half parted, his cheeks splotched with cold. Grantaire wants to kiss life back into them but he can’t because they’re breathless. He says nothing, only reaches in his pockets for papers with his trembling hands and starts rolling a second cigarette.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Apollo?” he breathes.

Enjolras stands there numb, his wrist limp in Grantaire’s grip. He can feel his pulse thrumming frantically beneath his fingers and it matches Grantaire’s heart. Eventually he deflates. “Sorry,” he murmurs, as Grantaire takes the cigarette from his hands and rolling it for him a bit more steadily, lighting it and taking in a greedy drag before giving it back. “I’m just…” his voice shudders. “I’m disappointed. I’ve never felt so fucking lost.”

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

“I need you to kiss me.”

He remembers the first time he told him. _Just kiss me, my applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me._ A year ago. A whole fucking year fucking _Christ._

_We are all going forward. None of us are going back._

He leans closer and presses his lips upon Enjolras’ cold, sweaty forehead. They swallow the smoke from each other’s lips but that is all.

“It’s just…” he feels him sobbing and his heart sinks, “this year was horrible _everywhere_. I’ve worked and tried and shouted, but there has been so much injustice, the world is shredding to pieces, and I’m not shouting loud _enough_.” Grantaire’s arms wrap around Enjolras’ shaking shoulders and he feels his weight collapsing against him. They shelter themselves close to the balcony door, where there isn’t much snow. “Even if something gets better, everything else will fall apart on the other side,” he gasps for breath, “and we’re simply not enough, we’ll never be enough.”

“Okay, so you’re having a little existential crisis here,” Grantaire says decidedly, wrapping his fingers around Enjolras’ wrists and steadying him, once again. “I’m not even going to mention the protest that concluded with actual changes in the educational system, or the petition on cop cameras, or the education Fridays in the university about everything going on in the world right now and never letting anyone forget, and the people you got in the streets to fight against transphobia. I’ll just keep it light and mention that you, a pathologically cynophobic person, gave home to a puppy who’d have died in the streets and suffocated it with love none of us believed you possessed, and I’ll casually drop that you’ve made me who I am today, clean for seven fucking months.”

“Don’t ever say that again,” Enjolras says hoarsely, “nothing you’ve achieved is on me. You’ve done it all on your own. You’ve changed yourself.”

“Yeah, I wish, we all wish, hell knows my self-esteem _wishes,_ but without you I’d be fucking dead by now.”

“Don’t say that,” he breathes faintly. “All this snow… I wish I was a child, so that I would enjoy the snow, without knowing about all those people who’ll have to spend the night in the street. I wish I was a child so… so that I could love my parents unconditionally again, and spend Christmases with them, without seeing all the rotten fucking things they do and are.” His gaze drifts away and his voice breaks. “We’re growing old. I’m graduating this year. Our friends have changed so much, Cosette and Marius already expecting a child… You’ve done all this progress this year, you’ve outdone yourself. Eponine going through transition, Combeferre settling down with her, Jehan and Courfeyrac in a long term relationship, fucking _Courfeyrac…_ ”

“And fighting about it all night,” Grantaire muses with a bittersweet smile.

“Yes, because they’re both overly dramatic assholes…”

“Look who’s talking…”

“Oh _shut_ up!” a faint smile appears on Enjolras’ frozen lips and Grantaire’s heart swells three times its size. “It’s just… they’re all changing.”  _And I’m not._ He doesn’t need to say it. Grantaire knows.

“You’ve changed enough,” he shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, from punk with seven piercings, to ironic three piece suit, to starry pyjamas? I don’t know about you,” he attempts to joke, “but that’s quite a change! Listen to me,” he places a thumb underneath Enjolras’ chin and forces him to look up. His eyes are glowing with tears, he looks so young, almost chaste, and Grantaire wants to cry too but, for once, he knows he can’t. “It probably feels strange for you, because you’ve never felt doomed when the year is changing, but I’ve been through it twenty seven times already. Remember last year? I was pissed drunk and we were discussing New Year’s Revolutions.”

“That was a terrible pun from the very start,” Enjolras scoffs.

Grantaire snorts. “I can’t believe you of all people just said that.”

“But see? You accomplished your resolutions. You went through withdrawal. You’ve done so much progress!”

“I accomplished that and it was fucking _hell,_ but there are other resolutions I completely fucked up with. For example, paint at least one shit a month, and take the trash out every morning. I take Feuilly out every morning instead!”

Enjolras laughs half-heartedly.

“What I’m trying to say is, I figured it out. Fuck resolutions. They’re going to happen if they’re about to. The year has changed and you need to leave stuff behind, and carry things forever. _Find_ those things. Do it now. Think of what’s passed, don’t stress yourself over what’s about to come.”

“What do you mean?” Enjolras frowns.

“I mean that I’m probably the most fucked up person in this world…”

“You’re not…”

Grantaire holds up a hand and interrupts Enjolras’ protesting. “Hush. I’ve always been the royal fuck up of our group. Let’s face it. I spent Christmas day throwing up on Cosette’s carpet without even drinking. I spent Boxing Day cooking for Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta while they had wild sex in the other room. My family is fucked up and my sister won’t talk to me again. Our friends are fighting and I’m tired of their shit and _fuck_ knows how much I crave my booze sometimes.” Enjolras opens his mouth to protest again but Grantaire interrupts him once more. “What I mean to say is, all I can do anymore to not give up, is thing of the things I can thankful for, things that happened this year, things that changed my life and things I hadn’t even imagined. That way you’ll see how it can feel doomed, yet it’s still worth it because other things will come, things you haven’t even dared to think about, things that will change your life and wander forever with you.”

“What are you thankful for?” Enjolras shudders, pressing his body against Grantaire and huddling for warmth as the snowflakes swirl around.

“The Beatles,” Grantaire begins with ease, his thumb rubbing comforting circles on Enjolras’ wrist. His eyes slide shut as Enjolras lowers his head to melt the snowflakes of his lips upon his forehead. “Whenever I listen to Maggie May, their voices will demand that I pull my shit together and continue, they’ll be alive and as flawless as I thought they were when I was thirteen, not the problematic assholes of my fucked up, wasted, ridiculous young adulthood. My friends. The fact that Jehan felt strong enough to wear a dress today, the fact I could support him through it the way he supported me when I was half dead.”

“It was a beautiful dress,” Enjolras mumbles quietly.

“Agree. I told him the tulle and the sequins should be fucking coral. Went fantastic with his hair. But I continue. I’m thankful for Paris. For every moment we’ve spent strolling by the Seine, every image of the gardens and the leaves and all the poetic shit Jehan would write about, the fact that we’ve been _there_. I could die now, and need nothing more than what we’ve had and what we’ve seen.” There is another kiss on his cheek, it’s his turn to shudder. “Also my sister.”

“You’ve fought with your sister.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t change the images in my head. I still have the images of her running around with her squishy dimples, playing peekaboo with chubby tiny hands.” Enjolras falls silent next to him. “And I’ll forever be thankful for those images. I’m also thankful for the liver I’ll probably get to keep.”

“I’ve told you, there’s nothing to be thankful for. You need to be _proud_ of this, you did it on your own, not with my acceptance and my presence, but _in spite_ of our fights and all the tears and the times I’ve brought you on the verge of relapsing…”

“Yeah okay, whatever. To continue, I’m also thankful for Theroigne. You needed that dog in your life. She showed you some things not me, not Combeferre, not anyone could ever have.”

“I’m  thankful for her too,” Enjolras cracks a smile. “I can’t think of me before her.”

“See? I’m also thankful for the jasmines.” Enjolras kisses the snowflakes off his eyelids and Grantaire thinks he will faint. “In the spring, when we…” he clears his throat. _When we were living together,_ “when I’d get up in the morning and walked to the boulangerie while you were still snoring like a cat under the covers, there would always be fallen jasmines on the pavement and they’d smell like my grandmother. I’d pick one every day and sketch it quickly in the metro, when old aunties would be rude and racist, and in that way I told them ‘My gran was fucking cooler than you’.” Enjolras stares at him seriously. Grantaire clears his  throat. “I’m also thankful for Remus and Tonks.”

“Remus and Tonks?” Enjolras gasps with surprise, pulling the parka tightly around them so that the chattering of their teeth might slow down. “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know,” Grantaire shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve shipped them through my entire childhood. I have so many beautiful memories from the stories I made in my head, when reality was shit. Now when I think of them, I see all those years passing before my eyes.”

“But…” Enjolras says absurdly, “I always shipped Wolfstar!”

“Of course you did, so did I, but they aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Remus was queer…”

“So was Tonks, their relationship doesn’t invalidate their queerness, Apollo,” Grantaire raises an eyebrow. “Anyway, it had always been important for me, what she finds in her, everything he’s lost. How she helps him find his faith.”

“Remus never lost his faith!” Enjolras argues, and he would be fearsome, but he’s actually pretty amusing, what with his starry pyjamas and chattering teeth.

“’Course he did,” Grantaire shrugs his shoulders. “Thought he’d never find it, too.” He lowers his eyes to their tangled, frozen fingers. “Turns out he was wrong. Isn’t that what you’d always say, Apollo?”

“Don’t call me that,” Enjolras whispers for the millionth time. Over the past few months Grantaire has lost the count. “How don’t the memories wreck you,” he continues, “now that they’re over?”

“I’ve been wrecked enough already, sweetheart,” Grantaire says huskily, the distance between their lips shortened, established only by a few floating snowflakes. “I have no more tears to spill, just a constant effort to pull and no excuses left.”

“I’d imagined your coat around me so many times,” Enjolras says in a shaky voice, his forehead resting upon Grantaire’s, his palms sliding in the backpockets of Grantaire’s jeans. “Never like that…”

“Sorry I could never be what you needed,” Grantaire utters huskily, shutting his eyes in horror. He can feel Enjolras’ misty breath brushing on his face, he can’t take this anymore. He’s done progress, yes, but this is pure, merciless torture, and he’s not yet strong enough for this. Will never be.

“You’re all that I’m thankful for,” Enjolras whispers, and then they kiss.

It’s not like they’ve never done it before. It’s not full of sparks and fireworks, passionate or reverent. It’s freezing and warm at the same time, it’s melting with relief and sinking in everything that drowns you all over again, it’s a _welcome back_ and an _I’ve been waiting for you,_ and Grantaire swears he’ll fucking explode all over the snow and the ridiculous Christmas lights.

“Everything we knew is gone,” Enjolras murmurs against his lips after what feels like a century. “Everyone is gone the way they were and you can go and I won’t die but I won’t live either, and I know you don’t think _we_ can work but I always fail to see why it can’t. Just let me have you, you’re all I’ll ever thankful for.”

“You have me, you big pretentious fucking baby,” Grantaire chuckles shakily, their foreheads still entwined. “You also have a potential pneumonia that you share with me, and for which none of us should be thankful. But hey, I’ve always said I’d die with you!” he jokes.

“Shut up,” Enjolras punches his shoulder playfully, nuzzling his face into his neck. “God, I love you so much!”

“We’re still young, sweetheart,” he whispers in his ear before kissing him, just behind his earlobe, underneath the blond locks where Grantaire knows there is a tattoo he did in autumn just before they split up for the thousandth time, a calligraphic R. “Let us believe we are.”

“Let’s not give a fuck then, just for tonight,” Enjolras exhales it in fractals into Grantaire’s lips. “Let nothing matter while we dance.”

“Not even pneumonia?”

“Not even pneumonia.”

“Joly will sacrifice my fucking balls to the Hippocrates, or to the God of Ridiculous Human Beings, whoever the fuck knows.”

“Is that God Apollo?” Enjolras asks mischievously as they press their bodies together and start swaying in the snow.

“Probably,” Grantaire breathes huskily, being kissed again, “definitely.”

They go inside to dance, tattering and wet, and they do so on Courfeyrac’s couch, shoved back together underneath the covers. They don’t stop whispering naked prayers upon each other’s lips like infatuated teenagers, as the New Year waltzes its way around its first baby steps, dawn breaking bleary and clumsy, pale and slightly sunshiny. They pretend the song won’t end, and it’s as easy as pretending they haven’t both gotten bronchitis.

But it’s okay, because the year is young and full of lights, and so are they.


End file.
